Fools Aplenty (Delivered by Art)

Here is another installment of "Delivered by Art."  This particular piece jumped the line, because I just received it, and liked it, and remembered that I could bring a couple other issued into the post.  This is from Jim again.  He said he would continue sending me art via postcards and I am glad he is following through with it.  Here we have Jim's foray into the world of the occult and divination by way sarcasm.
It's from what Jim labels as "The Aimless Hipster's San Francisco Tarot."  From an artistic standpoint, I am enjoying the watercolor work and the inclusion of the landscape and landmarks of San Francisco, as well as the inclusion of the pipe (Jim is a pipe smoker) and the scroll border.  This is the figure of "The Fool."  The Fool is an interesting character, because although he is sometimes portrayed in motley like a court jester or juggler, in the arcana of the Tarot, the Fool is not the butt of a joke or a simpleton who job it is to amuse others.  Instead, the Fool is a character on a journey, open to new experiences, willing to let the journey be the destination.

The Fool is the spirit in search of experience. He represents the mystical cleverness bereft of reason within us, the childlike ability to tune into the inner workings of the world ("The Fool (Tarot card)" Wikipedia article)

I think writers and artists are quick to empathize with the Fool and can identify and perhaps even strive to emulate the fool. It is not always easy to open yourself up to change and be willing to be swept away by what life has to offer. I love looking at Tarot cards, seeing the artwork and the variation of style and content using the same set of templates. And I will admit to enjoy considering the quasi-mystical element of the cards as well.  Cards that can foresee the future?  That is pretty cool if you ask me.  But it is that spirit of openness and willing to take what life and the future have to offer that inspired me to use the figure of the fool in a short comic I did on New Year resolutions (You can click on the image to view the post with the comic or CLICK HERE).  I made my Fool card from looking at probably the most recognizable set of Tarot cards, known as the Waite-Smith deck or the Rider-Waite deck (and also known by like a dozen other names).  I include the image of the fool to provide a comparison.  I would say that Jim's Fool is more of a departure and more original rendition of the Fool card.  I was definitely going for image recognition and a connection to the Waite-Smith deck.

I remember meeting an artist/illustrator a the Haddonfield Arts Festival last year, and he had recently landed a gig where he would be doing the illustrations for a deck of Old Maid cards, and I thought that was great, and it opened my mind to the idea of how your illustrations could be marketed and what kind of products your art could be attached to.  I immediately had a Tarot deck in mind.  It would make a quite an extended and prolonged project to do all the cards of the Tarot, but I think it would be pretty great to have a collection of illustrations, all drawn and painted in the same style, working off the basic template of the Tarot, but leaving plenty of room for interpretation.  That one project, creating a Tarot deck, would be an entire portfolio of work.  Jim's postcard says that it is the first of a series, so I will look for more in the future.  In the meantime check out a pretty interesting novel that features a deck of Tarot cards, and a link to a Rider-Waite deck.

Changing Styles Halfway Through

I have been cheating with my sketchbook project.  Certainly not every day, and I am struggling to keep up with one a week, which is very disappointing, but I will muddle through.  The cheating comes in where I try to use my sketch as my daily sketch as well as an Ink Puddle posting, but in my defense, I really need to post more often, so I gotta do what I I gotta do, right?

Anyway, as I working on this sketch, it came to me that I could use it to illustrate a point about artistic styles and the need to sometimes change a style midway through a project.

This and other sketches at http://sketches.inkpuddle.com

I feel like I did a better job here.

I started off this sketch as a representational piece.  Like I have done with other sketches, I wanted to capture the likeness of the object.  I have done this with more success elsewhere.  With my sketch of Toledo (Roman knight of sorts), I tried to draw what I saw, which is to say, the statue of this knight.  And I think I did a pretty good job.  It is incomplete and I get a little stylistic with the lines, but overall, I think it looks like the statue looks like in real life.

When I started with the mug, I knew I was setting the standard high, because for me, drawing cylinder shapes (multiple rings or circles), getting their curves and proportions right, is very difficult.  Not for everybody, mind you, and I am sure there are tricks to doing it better, but I find capturing the curves and shadows of things like glassware to be very difficult.

So, as I continued drawing the sketch, and being disappointed with it, I decided to take the approach in a new direction. I decided I was going to be more stylistic with my lines, mimicking in a way the lines of van Gogh.  If I couldn't get the proportions and curves right, I would flood the piece with lines and curves, and be a bit more abstract, although abstract is not the right word.  Let's stick with "stylistic," because I shifted the focus of the piece from accurately representing the actual object in real life to creating a stylized beer mug object, with its own kind of presence.  "This is not a mug."  I added more and more lines, added yellows and light oranges to fill in the blank space.  In some previous sketches in this brown paper sketchbook (it's actually a Paperchase brand photo album with a heavy kind of craft paper), I left a lot of empty space.  Here I tried to fill as much of it as possible, even if it was with light yellows.  And then I added blocky, chunky yellow strokes as a kind of background / false horizon for the sketch.  Again, this was done as a kind of way of reinforcing that this was no longer a representational piece.

Clearly, this change of direction in style and purpose arose out of a failure of sorts.  I could not properly fix the curves and proportions to my satisfaction for it to be a well-done representational / only slightly stylized piece, so I went all the stylized.  And I am much more satisfied with its completion.  Cheating?  Taking the easy way out?  I don't think so, because I still worked on it to the best of my ability and to the point where I thought it was completed.

American History in markers on a postcard (Delivered by Art)

I was hoping to post several different posts before doing another "Delivered by Art" post, but that did not happen.  You might also notice that the stamps on this postcard have not been cancelled, and that is because the postcard has not yet been mailed.  I don't expect to get this postcard back...ever, because it is a gift, but why not preserve it digitally before it gets thrown into the US Postal system.

I googled an image of Frederick Douglass for this postcard.  I liked his hair in this photo.  Actually, he has pretty great hair in every image ever taken of him.  So I magnified the image in my web browser, took out my markers and started laying down lines.  Started with a very light gray.  I have been using it almost  like a pencil in that I am laying down guidelines.  They are faint and won't show up heavily later, and I kind of like the jumping right to markers and not trying to do several pencil sketches first, constantly refining it.  I don't like trying to replicate the image exactly, so I took some liberties.  Overall, I liked how it came out.  Maybe I will do a whole series of sketches on Douglass.  Great hair on that guy.  The whole abolition thing was pretty great, too, but that hair.  Wow.

Markers and ink on Canson brand watercolor postcard

Here is the back.

I stand by my comments on brilliant men and crazy hair.  James Brown would be another example.  Yahoo Serious is a glaring exception, however.